Page 25

CHAPTER 25

Costa had expected it to be bad, and it was.

Most of Diana’s house still stood, fire-scorched walls surrounded by a great outwash of black ash and flame-retarding chemicals. But it was clear that there would be little to salvage. Even metal items would likely have been melted by the heat.

“Look at this.” Diana plucked a butterfly-shaped wind spinner from a corner of the yard. Like many Arizona front yards, it was decorated with rocks and xeriscaping rather than having a lawn. “My last surviving possession.”

“Diana, I’m so sorry.” His words fell flat; there was simply nothing he could say to console that level of loss.

But Diana didn’t seem devastated. She had been quiet as they wandered around the burnt-out house, but there was nothing about her that suggested the losses were affecting her too badly.

“I’m choosing to look at it as a fresh start.” She twirled the wind spinner between her fingers. “I was pretty close to paying off the mortgage, which sucks, but it means I’m looking at a solid insurance settlement when that comes through. I could do almost anything with it.”

“Leave?” Costa asked quietly.

The mere idea of Diana going away opened up a gaping hole in his heart. But he wouldn’t blame her. He couldn’t think of a single reason why she would want to stay at this point.

Diana shook her head and turned away, still holding the wind spinner. “I don’t know. I have some ideas. I’m keeping my options open. Come on, let’s go see if my car’s still there.”

It was, parked right down the street where she had left it when they got the groceries out, a couple of days and a lifetime ago.

Diana slowed and stopped, and gave a short, startled laugh.

“So I guess my keys are somewhere out in the desert between here and New Mexico. My spare key, well ...” She waved a hand at the remains of her house. Then she put her hand over her face for a minute.

Hesitantly, Costa placed a hand on her back.

“Come on. I’ll drive this time. Okay if we go to the ranch?”

“Nowhere else I’d rather be,” Diana said with a choked little hiccup. However, when she took her hand from her face, she didn’t seem to be crying.

She brought the wind spinner with her.

Back in Tucson, Costa swung by his condo to pick up several changes of clothes and toss some perishable items from the fridge. It was starting to feel like the condo was merely a stopover on the way to other places, like a hotel room where he occasionally refreshed himself but didn’t stay.

Diana accepted the offer of some borrowed clothes of his to change into later.

“I also wouldn’t mind swinging by a Target or something. Your female relatives have things I could wear, but most of them either aren’t in my style, or my size. And I need some, uh. Intimate stuff. Underwear and deodorant and that sort of thing.”

“My lady’s wish, et cetera.”

It was a joke—but there was a much more relaxed feeling between them. Something had shifted during their time in the desert, pivoted and rearranged. Even though they hadn’t defined anything officially, hadn’t talked about the future, they had fallen into a closer harmony than they had enjoyed since their teen years.

Costa stopped by a store and Diana collected some things. Her wallet was also in the desert somewhere, so Costa took out his credit card, raised his eyebrows at her, and she sighed and shoved the basket of clothes and toiletries into his hand.

“Just as well I didn’t get pulled over on the way here, since I can’t legally drive without a license. I honestly forgot about that.”

“The SCB can help smooth the process of getting your ID and everything back.” Guilt assailed him; he had been too worried over everything else happening to her to even remember that she had lost most of her few remaining personal effects in the desert.

“I’ll take you up on that. Honestly, I’m almost looking forward to the everyday headache of dealing with my credit card company. I’ll pay you back for everything,” she added, as they went through the self checkout. “I do have a decent bank account, I just can’t get to it right now.”

Knowing how independent she was, Costa knew better than to tell her he’d buy her literally anything she wanted up to and including the moon if he could find a way to put a price tag on it. “I’m not keeping track, but I won’t be offended if you do.”

“I will,” she said, briskly taking the receipt from his hand.

Costa kissed her nose. Diana looked stunned, and he thought he’d overstepped, but she gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and they walked out to his car with their shoulders bumping.

It was just— easy . When was the last time they’d been truly easy with each other? All the hurt and anger, all the awkward uneasiness, the way he never seemed to know the right things to say and they kept upsetting each other ... all of that seemed to have been washed away during their time in the wilderness, leaving behind a renewal like desert spring.

“How do you feel?” Costa asked her as they drove out of the city.

“Fine. A little headachy, like I’m getting over being sick. Pretty normal.” She spread one strong, tanned hand on the dashboard and flexed her fingers. “Any word on Farley?”

“No. Could you use my phone to text the office? It’s in my jacket. The unlock code is—” He hesitated very briefly. “0819.”

* * *

Diana unlocked his phone and didn’t remark on what they both knew, that this was her birthdate. Instead she opened the text app. There was an absolute sea of texts from his aunts: a picture of Em covered in mashed potatoes, a picture of Em not covered in mashed potatoes, Em asleep on a blanket ...

“It looks like Em’s doing fine with your family,” she said, suppressing a smile. There were also a lot of Quinn, answer your phone and CeCe, are you all right? that she tried to skim over, looking for anything important. “You have some texts from Caine. Do you want to read them?”

“Read ‘em to me.”

“You’re sure?”

“No secrets,” he said with a quick smile that implied, No secrets between us again. Not ever again. “If it’s about the case, it affects you too.”

“Okay, well—there’s one from a half hour ago, probably while we were shopping, asking if you’re at the ranch. Then a few minutes later he says Delgado is heading out to the ranch soon because there’s something you need to see.”

“Huh. Tell him we’re on the way there too, and we’ll see her when she gets there. And ask him if he can tell me what this very important ‘something’ is.”

Diana typed the message. The answer came back a minute later. “He says you need to see it to believe it.”

Costa sighed. “Typical Caine. I’m not gonna worry about it now.”

She was going to put the phone away, but she had noticed something in one of the text chains that she couldn’t resist tapping to confirm. Then she laughed. “Is this me? Do you really have me in your phone as Acme No. 1?”

Costa looked abruptly embarrassed. “Uh, I forgot about that.”

“Why on Earth?”

“Because—looking at your name made me—” He swallowed. “It was easier to keep things how we wanted it, that is, fake, if I didn’t have to look at your name every time you called me.”

“Oh,” Diana whispered. Thinking of how she reacted to seeing Costa’s name in her texts, she could understand perfectly. She relocked the phone and put it down on her thigh. “But why Acme No. 1? Is that like in the Road Runner cartoons with the coyote?”

“Yeah.” Costa flashed her a quick grin. “I don’t know why it made me think of you. I guess you out flying your helicopter around in the desert made me think of the canyons from those cartoons. Is that ridiculous?”

“Yes,” Diana told him. She curled her hand around the phone. Then, on impulse, she reached out and laid her other hand on his thigh, letting it rest there. “But it’s also sweet. I like it. I do hope my helicopters have always been a little more effective than Wile E. Coyote’s devices, though.”

He put his hand over hers, warm and comforting. “They’ve got a much better operator at the controls.”

* * *

The familiar landscape of the hills and canyons around the ranch seemed to rise up and welcome Costa home, folding him into its rumpled, rocky embrace. It felt as if nothing bad could happen to him here.

He knew that was false; a lot of bad things had happened here. His parents’ deaths. Diana leaving ...

But most of the bad had been elsewhere. Marco dying. All of the crime and ugliness that he dealt with every day. The ranch was a refuge, and he hoped on some deep level that Diana thought of it that way, too.

The thing he had come to realize, though, was that he never wanted it to be a trap for her. He remembered Diana’s mother, a thin, unhappy woman who had disliked her ranch life and had died young from heavy smoking and drinking. At the time, Costa couldn’t understand Diana’s fears of ending up like her mother. He had seen Diana as too strong, too brave, too self-determined to ever let other people run roughshod over her dreams.

Now he understood much better. In his work with the SCB, he had seen too many women—and many men, too—trapped by life choices, by family obligations, or simply by rural poverty. He saw all too well what Diana had feared would happen to her (a too-young marriage, all her dreams stolen out of her hands). He would love to say he would never have done that to her, but how could he be sure? They had both been terribly young. Neither of them had the life experience to truly understand what they were signing up for, or what they were giving up.

By walking away, Diana had probably done the best possible thing for both of them.

And now .... He glanced sideways at Diana’s profile as she looked out the window, relaxed and calm to an extent that amazed him after all she’d been through. Her hand still rested on his thigh, with his own covering it.

Now they were older, maybe not wiser, but certainly more experienced.

We know who we are. We know what we want.

And he wanted Diana. He had never stopped wanting her. All these years, he’d bounced off a series of short-term relationships and never quite understood why he couldn’t find the long-term love he was looking for, and finally gave up on it—what he had wanted, what he had been looking for, was her. He couldn’t find it because he hadn’t been looking in the right place.

Now he knew. He would have waited a hundred years for her.

In the end, he’d only had to wait twenty.